God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowelless being of the Testaments - the vehement glorymonger, with His bag of cheap carny tricks and his booming voice - the fiery huckster with his burning bushes and his wonder wands. Nowadays God knows what He wants and He knows who He wants.

My responsibility as an artist is to turn up at the page or the piano or the microphone. The rest is up to God.

The Daily Telegraph (Novevember 20, 1997)

The actualising of God through the medium of the love song remains my prime motivation as an artist.

Given during a lecture at the Vienna Poetry Festival (1998)

Of course I doubt [the existence of God], I would distrust anybody who didn't doubt. But I'm a believer. I have an understanding and belief in the divinity of things. It seems to me that people look at God in the wrong way. They think that God is there to serve them, but it's the other way around. God isn't some kind of cosmic bell-boy to be called upon to sort things out for us. It's important for us to realise that God has given us the potential to sort things out on our own.

Observer (May, 1998)

Oh, a passing, skeptical kind of interest. I'm a hammer-and-nails kind of guy.

Cave on his interest in Eastern and nontheistic spirituality

The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas. So that if you mention God, or a belief in God, in England, it's almost automatically associated with that kind of thinking. Religion's gotten a really bad name.

Although I've never been an atheist, there are periods when I struggled with the whole thing. As someone who uses words, you need to able to justify your belief with language, I'd have arguments and the atheist always won because he'd go back to logic. Belief in God is illogical, it's absurd. There's no debate. I feel it intuitively, it comes from the heart, a magical place. But I still I fluctuate from day to day. Sometimes I feel very close to the notion of God, other times I don't. I used to see that as a failure. Now I see it as a strength, especially compared to the more fanatical notions of what God is. I think doubt is an essential part of belief.

Mojo (January, 2005)

God is in everything whether I’m mentioning him or not.

Cave's response to an interviewer calling Grinderman a "secular record"

The brutality of the Old Testament inspired me, the stories and grand gestures. I wrote that stuff up and it influenced the way I saw the world. What I'm trying to say is I didn't walk around in a rage thinking God is a hateful god. I was influenced by looking at the Bible, and it suited me in my life vision at the time to see things in that way. .... After a while I started to feel a little kinder and warmer to the world, and at the same time started to read the New Testament.

If you're involved with imagination and the creative process, it's not such a difficult thing to believe in a God. But I'm not involved in any religions, and I've never intended to make religious records or records that preach some kind of point of view.

I don't particularly believe all love is doomed. But I guess, one is usually kinda suffering from some aborted love affair or association, rather than being at the peak of one. I think it's fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it. But I wouldn't like to dwell on it. Perhaps you could lighten up a bit.

My social conscience is fairly limited in a lot of ways; there's not much I'm angry about that doesn't affect me quite directly. But the prison system- not particularly capital punishment- but the penal system as it is, and the whole apparatus of judgement, people deciding on other people's fates... that does irritate, and upset me quite a lot. What angers me about the system goes beyond the unreliability of "proof"… it's that the way criminals are dealt with has nothing to do with rehabilitation and readjusting people who've stepped outside society's norms. The same goes for mental institutions and so forth. But it's also the very idea of someone being judged "criminal" or "insane" because they're unable to fit into what a corrupt society considers "social" or "sociable".

I think there's a certain numbness in modern society, that accepts certain kinds of violence, but represses other kinds of violence.

I'd rather see what makes me different as something almost congenital. And I have these inklings that what you commit or endure in this world, relates to some kind of justice or balance. Maybe if you get a bad deal in this world, it is because of something you did, or were, in a previous life. Which is why I don't feel sorry for the poor.

Bunny takes another bite of his Big Mac and knows what everybody who is into this sort of things knows - that with its flaccid bun, its spongy meat, the cheese, the slimy little pickle and, of course, the briny special sauce, biting into a Big Mac is as close to eating pussy as, well, eating pussy.

The Death of Bunny Munro (2009)

The boy watches his father cross the road and thinks there is something about the way his dad moves through the world that is truly impressive. Cars screech to a halt, drives shake their fists and stick their heads out the windows and curse and blow their horns and Bunny walks on as if radiating some super-human force field, like he has walked off the pages of a comic book. The world can't touch him. He seems to be the grand generator of some hyper-powerful electricity.

The sound is beautiful, it's perfect!
The sound of her young legs in stockings,
The rhythm of her walk, it's beautiful!
Just let it twist, let it break,
Let it buckle, let it bend,
I want to hear the noise of my Zoo-Music Girl.

My body is a monster driven insane,
My heart is a fish toasted in flames.

I am the king! I am the king! I am the king!
One dead marine through the hatch,
Scratch and scrape this heavenly body,
Every inch of winning skin,
Honey Honey Honey Honey Honey, come and kiss me-e-e-e-e-e!

Ah read her diary on her sheets,
Scrutinizin' every lil' piece of dirt,
Tore out a page'n'stufft it inside my shirt.
Fled outa the window,
And shinning it down the vine,
Outa her night-mare, and back into mine.

Straight in the arms of the city goes Huck,
Down the beckonin' streets of op-po-tunity,
Whistling his favorite river-song...
And a bad-blind nigger at the piano puts a sinister blooo lilt into that sing-a-long,
Huck senses something's wrong!

The mo-o-o-on, its huge cycloptic eye,
Watches the city streets contract, twist and cripple and crack.

O you recall the song ya used to sing-a-long,
Shifting the river-trade on that ol' steamer,
Life is but a dream!

When ya done ransackin' his room,
Grabbin' any-damn-thing that shines,
Throw the scraps down on the street,
Like all his books and his notes.
All his books and his notes and all the junk that he wrote,
The whole fucken lot goes right up in smoke.

Here is the hammer, that build the scaffold, and built the box...

From the words and the thickets,
Come the ghosts of his victims,
'We love you!'
'Ah love you!'
This will not hurt a bit.

The carny had a horse, all skin and bone,
A bow-backed nag, that he named "Sorrow",
Now it is buried in a shallow grave,
In the then parched meadow.

And as the company passed from the valley, into a higher ground,
The rain beat on the ridge and on the meadow, and on the mound,
Until nothing was left, nothing at all except the body of Sorrow,
That rose in time, to float upon the surface of the eaten soil.

I hear stories from the chamber,
How Christ was born into a manger,
And like some ragged stranger died up on the cross...

I hear stories from the chamber,
How Christ was born into a manger,
And like some ragged stranger died up on the cross,
And might I say it seems to fitting in its way,
He was a carpenter by trade,
Or at least that's what I'm told.

In heaven His throne is made of gold,
Where the ark of His testament is stowed,
A throne from which I'm told all history does unfold,
Down here it's made of wood and wire,
And my body is on fire,
And God is never far away.

And the mercy seat is melting,
And I think my blood is boiling,
And in a way I'm spoiling,
All the fun with all this truth and consequence.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,
And anyway I told the truth,
And I'm not afraid to die.

Thrown into a dungeon,
Bread and water was my portion,
Faith - my only weapon,
To rest the devil's legion.
The speak-hole would slide open,
A viper's voice would pleade,
A voice think with innuendo,
Syphillis and greed.

The moon was turned toward me,
Like a platter made of gold,
My death, it almost bored me,
So often was it told.

In the days of madness, my brother, my sister,
When you're dragged toward the Hell-mouth,
You will beg for the end, but there ain't gonna be one, friend,
For the grave will spew you out! It will spew you out!

The woods eats the woman and dumps her honey-body in the mud,
Her dress floats down the well and it assumes the shape of the body of a little girl,
Yeah, I recognize that girl,
She stumbled in some time last loneliness,
But I could not stand to touch her now,
My one and only onlyness.

I took her from rags right through to stitches,
Oh baby, tonight we sleep in separate ditches.

I'm looking forward to working with Nick on something special one day. .... He has an amazing gift, a level of spirituality and self-realisation in his writing you don't often find. A Hemingway or Xavier Herbert of our time.

Nick Cave and myself got up and did karaoke in Brisbane one night at this Mongolian BBQ karaoke restaurant. It was just a bunch of normal, Brisbane folk. Me and Nick got up to do "Fernado", "Sometimes When We Touch" and "He's Not Heavy, He's My Brother". I was just playing the straight man, but Nick was doing the whole Birthday Party bit, with the kneedrops and the 'Raarrggh!', running up to tables doing the cabaret terrorist act, kissing old ladies. They took it for two numbers, and by the third they'd had enough and wanted to go back to, well, enjoying their evening.

There was one review [of Stadium Arcadium] by an English newspaper where the guy really hated us and it was full of insults and descriptions about how terrible and worthless we are and how inane our music is. The guy mentioned that Nick Cave really thought we were a shitty band and printed a quote that Nick Cave had said in that regard. For a second that hurt my feelings because I love Nick Cave. I have all of his records. I don't care if Nick Cave hates my band because his music means everything to me and he is one of my favourite songwriters and singers and musicians of all time. I love all the incarnations of the Bad Seeds. But it only hurt my feelings for a second because my love for his music is bigger than all that shit and if he thinks my band is lame then that's OK.

Nick Cave's making a lot of money, which is braindeath. I mean, going on tour with the same band for 20 years and playing the same songs–I don't care how you twist them, or torture the songs, you know? If it takes to be a posturing grandpa Wayne Newton-sounding bad Vegas-balladeer to get rich, I don't give a shit. I think this is lame. You know, he was one of the great poets and rocked like no other, but he's pathetic. How do these goth kids buy this crap? That's his genius; he's convinced goth kids to listen to their grandfathers' music.

I heard Nick Cave for the first time on an independent radio station in Australia, and the way he uses words is breathtaking. And it’s very melodic at the same time, very anthem-like. He also wrote a book called And the Ass Saw the Angel, from the perspective of a fetus in a womb. He’s really arrogant, but he can afford to be.

Outside the world of politics, one person in the world of the arts I would mention as an influence is Nick Cave, another person who has been around since the late 1970s. He has developed and changed remarkably, whilst remaining true to his vision. He has been a great help to me as well, without his knowing it.

On 30 March 1983 The Birthday Party played Los Angeles. Me and all the guys from Black Flag went to see them do two sets at a small place called The Roxy, and they were thoroughly godhead. They were one of the all-time premier live bands. .... I see Nick about once a year, which is about as much as I see anybody I don't work with. But that means when I do run into him it's really great to see him. He's an excellent human and I love him a lot and that's the bottom line, he's one of my favourite people, and I think he's a tremendous artist. He has a great band, too. The Bad Seeds are a band I will travel a great distance to see whenever possible. What Nick goes after is so incredibly interesting every time, because it's always different. He always takes chances. The art comes before the commerce. As far as the music business goes, he's one of the good guys. He's the real thing.